Excavation Painel do Pilao Stone wall by Christopher Davis

This is the northeast wall profile of the excavation unit. The wall that is underneath the rock art panel gigapans title "Painel do Pilao". This profile shows evidence that the wall itself was carved. The groves are deep cut in hard iron-rich metamorphosed cryptocrystalline sandstone (i.e. quasi-quartz). The wall itself is very hard and we are not sure how a stone-age culture went about doing this, but the grooves were probably made to level the surface and make the wall planar. Therefore, in addition to being artists, the culture might have been ancient prehistoric paleolithic masons! The soil level today comes up to almost completely bury these masonry marks. After seeing these marks, we decided to reexamine several monuments we thought were conspicuous. We concluded and are now building evidence to support the theory that the culture here were the "Ancient Stone Masons of the Amazon"